Alphonse Legros (French-British, 1837-1911), Portrait of Robert Browning

Oil on canvas, no apparent signature, inscribed "A. Legros" to lower stretcher, retaining museum exhibition label to verso, presented in a gilt frame with gallery plaque.

Stretcher size 17 x 13 in.; Frame dimensions 23 3/4 x 20 in.

Exhibited:
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Fiftieth Anniversary Exhibition 1915-1965, November 4, 1965-January 2, 1966

Alphonse Legros was born in France and moved to London in 1863 at the encouragement of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. He was a Professor of Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1876 until 1892.

This painting is likely one of Legros' timed head-studies, a method he developed while teaching at the Slade School. A very similar portrait of Browning, the famed English poet and playwright, is in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Craquelure with some associated lifting and several small paint flakes; canvas appears to have been re-stretched over a larger stretcher with visible edges and old tacking marks; areas of loss and damage to frame.

$1,000 - 2,000